


let it alone, child, it will surely grow

by Sharkchimedes



Category: The Legend of Prince Valiant (Cartoon)
Genre: Gawain/Bryant are a thing but its not the focus of the fic so I'm not tagging it, Gen, Mentions of Canonical Character Death, POV Changes, Platonic Soulmates, brief mention (non-graphic) of canonical child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharkchimedes/pseuds/Sharkchimedes
Summary: A brief series of flashes in the lives of these merry few, focused on the love and bonds they have with each other.
Kudos: 2





	let it alone, child, it will surely grow

**Author's Note:**

> this is inspired by several takes on "soulmates with seeing colors" aus; where it can apply to familial bonds, platonic relationships, and such. and its also super self indulgent so dont come for me fshdfhsdhf

Valiant knows color from nearly the moment of his birth. His world is full of the rich, strong blue of his father, and of the softer, gentler hazels like his mother’s eyes. Groix’s tack shines with Rolf’s orange as the man raises Valiant like near his own son. And through it all, red shines in the horse of Thule, in the cuts and scrapes he gets crawling through the brush for frogs for his mother and tales for his father.

In the swamp, the blue fickers before Valiant’s eyes as he makes his declaration, and he feels frost run over his heart. It’s a terrifying thing to learn that a parents love can be lost, that Wilhem’s affection for him can be dulled. When he leaves, he leaves with a faded, washing out blue, but he is wrapped in hazel, and it has to be enough. He turns a chip of orange pottery over in his hand again and again as he wanders for Camelot.

(Someday, the blue seeps back in, and Valiant doesn’t notice. He’s too busy with his training, with learning the layout of the castle and town, with slowly noticing other colors leaking into his vision from his friends in Camelot as they grow closer and their loyalties to each other are tested. Though the strife of it will remain with him, the familiarity of the regained color simply makes its return un-notable.)

After Rolf dies, a wound that will never truly heal, Valiant no longer can see the orange of his youth. It hurts in a way  _ more _ than having held the beloved man as he bled out. That had hurt,  _ oh _ it hurt, but where time may have healed his wounds from scuffles and battles, the loss of orange will always rip him anew. He knows where it’s missing- Groix’s tack as Arn cares for the horse, the fruits that they sometimes see at court, the bands of Bryant’s uniform. The sunset sky.

The blue and hazel remains, but it's different. A reminder of how far he's come, and what he has lost and could still  _ lose _ . More than once he sits with Caliburn at night and pulls the flat brush through the horse's hair and considers tacking him up and riding hard back to the swamp, lest one of them be slowly sucked away and Valiant not know it till he lost part of his vision.

So he becomes a better knight, a better friend- a better son. He never wants to see something like that again.

—

Gawain’s color hits Rowanne like the crash of a hammer to a hot blade, bright and golden like the King’s crown. Or, how she had alway expected it would look, anyway. She barely has time to register that the cloak her mentor always wears has been  _ golden _ , not grey or brown like her more recent guess, before she finds herself outside and being gently guided to a seat. Glancing beyond Gawain as she tries to get her bearings, she sees his horse tied to the post, nipping at the weeds coming up at the base. 

“I didn’t know you liked this tavern.” Is the first thing she can think to say, and for a moment, she nearly winces. She should probably be thanking him for saving her, even if she’s also somehow irritated that he didn’t trust her to handle it herself. 

To her surprise, he scowls as he gently runs a hand over her cheek, examining a mark that will likely turn into a bruise. “I don’t.” 

“Then why did you come?” Rowanne frowns up at him, and Gawain goes quiet. After a minute, when it seems he’s satisfied the damage isn’t too bad or worth rushing back to Merlin, he sits next to her.

“Valiant mentioned that you might have snuck out here. I came to check on you.” Gawain glances toward the door, tensing as a shadow passed the light. When no one exits, he relaxes again, hand dropping from the pommel of his sword. “We-  _ I _ forgot you three are still new here. This isn’t a place you should be.

“Much as I’d like to say that all of Camelot is true and honest, that would be a lie.” The knight sighs, looking up at the darkening sky. 

Rowanne frowns. Much as Valiant may not have seen any cracks in his dream yet, she hadn’t expected their mentor- one of the two most senior knights, and of them  _ Gawain _ , who seemed to be less the thinker than Bryant and more a brawler- to point out the flaws in youthful optimism.

“Like Morgana?” Rowanne asks. 

The knight gives her a surprised look and then laughs, covering his mouth and shaking his head. “Don’t let anyone hear you say that- least of all  _ her _ \- but yes.” Gawain grins at her. “You catch on pretty fast.” 

“I have to- helping my father with forge work taught me you always had to think ahead. I wasn’t always that quick at it." She shows him the faint white scars on her hands and the one that runs along her elbow. 

They sit outside the tavern under the darkening sky, swapping ancedotes and stories from their childhoods, and Rowanne realizes that yes, Gawain truly does care for her and Valiant and Arn. He’s just a boor when it comes to most social things. But it’s hard to deny what you can see.

Eventually, they must return to their respective beds or risk muddling through training the next day, so he stands and unties his horse and pulls her up behind him.

“Yellow suits you.” Gawain says, looking back at her as he guides his horse back onto the road to return to the keep. 

—

Gawain has long been used to seeing a bare minimum of colors. That is to say, he can see gold, and after he arrives in Camelot, the faint strokes of Arthur’s silver that is somehow warmer than the greys around it, Guinevere’s near-coal green, and the wizard’s purple. An odd family, to be sure, but one he’s happy to slot into. 

(He’s been told that he and Arthur are cousins of a sort, which Gawain doesn’t understand because Arthur is a Pendragon, and Gawain is certainly not. It’d been enough to get him a chance at knighthood, anyway.)

He doesn’t dedicate much thought to the new tones in his world, as they appear over the next few years. He has other things to do, like proving himself as a knight. This turns out to not take as long as he’d expected. He takes to the blade like a natural, and he’d had the horsemanship one needs for this kind of work. But after that comes commissions and assignments, so the echoes of family thought fade away.

Gawain realizes fairly early on in his full knighthood, and quickly found place at Arthur’s right hand, that he  _ has _ to come up with some sort of excuse for why he doesn’t officially court anyone. Sure, not  _ all _ of the knights have a lady, but the other notable exception among the “senior” knights is Kay, who is simply a bad-tempered boor of a man who no-one likes to be around. Which makes him the sole of them who is also lacking in advances. 

Gawain nearly envies him for having the reason. It was long ago now, but always felt fresh, the pain of the day he realized he would likely never have a courtship. It was a reality he could live with- too much of his life is spent traveling from the young castle of Camelot to skirmishes and peace meetings, all strung one after the other, sometimes with the King, Kay and the rest, and some on his own. 

And then, one day, he realizes, he can see  _ so much more _ . He has a partner, and three young adults he’s all but laid claim to as his own children to brood and fuse over, and those he began with are closer now. (And Kay is gone, and his petty antics with him.)

And it’s enough. 

—

(Bryant sees gold within his first month in Camelot, and can’t figure out who it belongs to. He’s not been long enough in the young city to have garnered any new close relationships that he would otherwise expect to see the hints of a color from. Perhaps in more time, he could see himself seeing whatever it is that the King and Queen see, and Merlin as well, but not so soon. 

When he asks Merlin about it, a few days into the brightening shimmer of gold, the man chuckles and he hears from Merlin’s other side Gawain choking on his mulled wine.

That answers that question, he thinks with an amused tug at his lips as Merlin graciously checks on the other knight.)

—

Dennis was certain colors were a lie. Some sort of thing that Father had made up to scare him and Dylan as children. There was only the sickly pink color of the soldier’s uniforms that looked like a slice of fish ( _ or like the diluted blood of fallen enemies, blood seeping through bandages, sick and death and fear- _ ), the maroon that had appeared after Edmund had started to train him, and the gray. Most of the world was gray, darker and lighter, but still just… gray. 

Sometimes, when the soldiers thought that Cynan and his most loyal weren’t listening, they’d speak of other colors. One said his wife back home had given him blue, like the sky; another claimed to have purple as violets; and more said they knew yellow like the sun.

He couldn’t imagine it. There was just the maroon, and even that had disappeared when… Edmund had gone. The salmon had faded not long after, and he never knew if it had been the lay of maroon on gray or just something he had imagined himself.

Cynan sells him. Dennis can’t even pretend surprise, even as he cries and begs for Cynan not to let the criminal take him. How can it be a surprise when all he can see is  _ gray _ , as his father casts him away and Dylan lets him?

When Valiant allows him to stow away with him in the pigeon cart, Dennis decides his new favorite color is black, like Valiant’s hair. Caliburn is black too, with a soft mane and even softer feathers, and he lets Dennis pull the brush through his hair and untangle burrs from his legs. 

Then… then the red starts to seep back in. It starts with the crest on Valiant’s tunic, the red horse of Thule. At first Dennis hopes- believes- that he is imagining it. It can’t be more than a cruel specter, called up by Valiant’s fury at learning Dennis is the son of the man who ousted his own father. 

But then it starts to seep into more things- like the tack Dennis cleans for Gawain’s horse, Bryant’s emblazoned tunic, Rowanne’s corset and the roses in the Queen’s garden. It gets bolder and brighter, far more so than the maroon he’d seen in Cynan’s castles. It stays, and it gets brighter and stronger each day, until the horse on Valiant’s shirt is as crisp and clean as the dark in Val’s hair and Caliburn’s hair, with no trace of grey to be found.

And then- and then it isn’t alone. Over the coming months, a whole  _ rainbow _ appears. The trees along the edge of the gardens turn green, and the leaves, and the sunflowers and the  _ sun _ turn yellow, and golden and pale blue accents follow after. Purple nearly shocks Dennis into screaming one morning when he sees one of his presentation outfits has turned. 

Colors are very, very real, Dennis realizes. He runs down the corridor, and finds Valiant, Arn, and Rowanne collecting some of the duller practice blades for practice, and seeing Valiant’s arms open, flings himself into them and  _ cries _ . 

(A year or so later, when Dennis finally tells Cynan that he is  _ not _ his son, orange blooms into being, and he can finally say that his favorite color is that of his own hair.)

—

One day, when Arn rides out with Rowanne through the forest by the old keep. While the masonry doesn’t seem to have fallen more since he and his friends called this place their permanent home, it does seem… emptier. Like as if without their presence, the laughter and the coming and going and the fire in the aging hearth, the keep has shrunk in on itself.

They pass by the wall that Modred had leapt their first night in Camelot’s shadow, by the garden where Arn had tended to the falcon. A few nicks and fallen blocks that they share a look over- knowing Valiant had knocked them down practicing with his sword. 

Returning to the forest by the old water wheel, Arn breathes in the morning air and sighs. He thinks of how far they’ve come since those first early weeks. They are all knights now, and Valiant a tried- if temporary- king. Today they will ride out to the nearest village to settle a claim in the reconstruction of the outer villages, and then they will return to Camelot by dinner. Valiant will be riding in from his commision to the east, and the three will sit around the great table with their mentors and friends. 

And Arn’s come so far himself- he may never be able to read as the others can, and he may have talents that are less useful in a court than in among the commoners, but that’s  _ okay _ . It’s taken him years to realize, but that’s what makes him the best knight he can be. He loves Valiant, and Rowanne, but they don’t know what it’s like to come from where he has.

And he can offer that knowledge and experience. He can be the knight Harold could have been, and wanted Arn to be in his stead. Though the wound still aches, he knows that he has grown beyond the rage that had threatened to destroy him, then. If Valiant has matured to king-worth, and Rowanne to her own un-threatened confidence in station, then he has learned the importance of honor.

He closes his eyes to offer up a prayer to Harold’s memory- something he always does when thoughts of the man and his family come to mind. And when he reopens them-

The forest is  _ green _ . A vibrant green, one that’s never been there before. The forest, to Arn, has always been flicked with colors, spots and brush strokes on grey. He knows, as anyone might, that leaves and plants are green, but he’s only seen the lightest of greens (a color that stretches to his earliest memories, running through the spring grass in the fields with Toby). This is deep, deep  _ green _ \- he thinks it must be the same color as gems. Emerald, he thinks they’re called.

He didn’t pull Groix’s reins back, not on purpose, but when he blinks again, the old horse has stopped and Rowanne has come back, giving him a worried look. 

“Arn?” 

“It’s… so  _ green _ . The trees, the grass- everything.” He breathes, glancing over at her. 

She’s giving him a look somewhere between heartache and a happy sort of pride. “Oh,  _ Arn _ .” 

She reaches across the gap between Groix and Luned and pulls him into a hug. He hugs her back, tight, and the green leaves drift to the forest floor around them.

  
  
  
  



End file.
